Generations Lost In Space
by Captain Hollywood
Summary: There wasn't much to Dean Winchester's life before 15 February, 1965. He had gone through a lot already, but nothing quite like this. At least he's got family, right?  AU, historical   angst
1. Generations Lost in Space

At 10 AM, on February 15 1965, John Lennon finally passed his driving test in his home town of Weybridge. He was a notoriously bad driver, and actually got behind the wheel rarely, even after getting his license. Later that day, the nation of Canada officially announced it's retire of the Union Jack in Ottawa ceremonies, adopting the red-and-white maple leaf design used to symbolize its true independence from the British. And even later that day, so late that the line between February 15 and 16 was blurred by midnight prowls and sleepless nights, Nat King Cole died of lung cancer, a regular smoker on grounds that it improved his singing voice. But before Nat King Cole, before Canada, and before John Lennon, Dean Winchester got to have the most important moment of his life, the most important moment of many people's lives—and not because of death or life or change—but because of a single piece of paper in the mail on a bitter February morning in Kansas.

Dean Winchester had turned 18 long ago, filled his draft information long ago. It was a proud moment for him (at the time). His father told him it was the right thing to do, that it made him a man. His father would know; his father was a good man (a great man). John Winchester raised Dean Winchester and his brother after their mother died, even despite his active military position; that didn't make growing up in every town, military base and Bumfuck County in the United States any easier, not on him or his brother or his dad. John Winchester would never have admitted to a drinking problem, but he certainly did have one. He never hit Dean or his brother, but he wasn't the nicest dad in the US Army either. Dean tried not to think about it, because when he did, he figured he wasn't too different and that terrified him more than he'd let on. John Winchester raised Dean Winchester and his brother after their mother died, raised them as best he could for a military man. Dean Winchester would like to think that he turned out alright. But seeing his father's coffin—sans one father—just two years ago was a lot for Dean to handle, maybe even too much to handle if he was being candid with himself.

The sound of silence hung heavy in the air, creating an impermeable barrier between the Rest of the World and the Winchesters. As a rule, they'd never made friends with the neighbors they found during their father's mish-mash of army life and child rearing. It was a hard environment to grow up in, but nobody had to say anything about it—all their lives, they'd known that was true. At his funeral, Captain Singer showed up, an old time friend of John's. He seemed to be a good man, he had wrinkles around his eyes, from smiling or screaming Dean couldn't tell. Dean smiled and shook his hand like a good boy, years of emotional masking paying their dues today. The day his father's coffin – sans his father—was buried in the ground.

Nobody knew if John Winchester was alive or dead for sure; only the Vietcong could tell Dean that. He wasn't keen on asking, though, and hoped he never got close enough to find out. But John Winchester had been missing in action for more than six months, and a family of hopefuls the Winchesters were not. The military wouldn't call him dead, and his mother wasn't there to arrange the service. Dean did it all himself, took the journal they found in a Vietnam foxhole and called up all the people inside. He didn't feel right handling his father's journal, a collection of all his friends, enemies and memories in coffee-stained pages that smelled like his dad (and gunpowder).

Dean hated the Army after that. His dad's career had gotten in the way of him and Dean, of raising a son, of letting him live like the rest of the Nuclear Generation—it had gotten in the way of his father and taken his father away from him when he needed him most, sent him to the asscrack of Asia and left him to die, where he did just that. Following orders like a good soldier, Dean figured. Dean hated the Army on the day his father's coffin – sans his father – was six feet under.

The service was nice, for a service about God and heaven above. Dean didn't think those things were around. He didn't have much faith in a God that would let the world turn out the way this one had. Kennedy was dead, students were screaming in the streets, decent homegrown Americans were dying in Vietnam and his dad – his dad's coffin minus one dad – was dead, buried, under foot. Dean Winchester didn't want to believe in a God if God could only make something like this. He was exiting the cemetery—not Arlington, because John Winchester didn't want to be buried with those Serviceable Men—when it happened. Dean Winchester didn't want to cry. He was twenty nine years old; he did not need to cry. Crying was for the people who had someone to comfort them. He leaned against his father's 1957 Chevy (no, Dean's 1957 Chevy, a voice told him in the back of his mind) and bawled like he was ten and dad was sending him home after breaking another model aircraft carrier in his private office, like there was someone there to tell him it was okay. Nobody came for Dean Winchester that day.

The Car was Dean's favorite memory of his father. It was black, sleek and slender like a Kansas City girl and built powerful like a Chicago woman. She was a 1957 Chevy Bel Air, bought used and fixed up new. For Dean, she was everything he needed. He treated her well, let her roar on the new, big streets and held her back for admiration on country roads. Through thick and thin, there was always Dean and the Bel Air. Dean was no family man, but he had his baby, and his baby had him. The Car was Dean's best friend, his wife and lover, his sole trust and agent of sincerity; it was his favorite memory of his father. Dean loved his car. He stood against her for what seemed like ages that day, bright sun and oak trees seemingly taunting him—but not the Chevy. She stood black and imposing like a visage of the Grim Reaper himself against the bright spring day. Dean was grateful. Finally, with a final sigh of half-hearted stability and a clearing of his weary throat, Dean Winchester climbed inside his father's—no, just his 1957 Chevy Bel Air and knew what he was going to do next for the first time in what seemed like eternity.

The next morning was a difficult one. Sunshine, still so bright and aggressive to Dean's sour mood, scorched into his eyelids as he slowly blinked himself into the physical world of 1965. Dean had a headache, his eyes were bleary and his nose was thick with swelling. Dean wasn't hung-over, he had stayed dry in respects for dear old dad (which was probably ironic, but Dean Winchester didn't know what irony was with a high school diploma and not much else). Dean Winchester would never cry again, he decided with an adamant groan of displeasure. He didn't feel better, and his father was still dead. None of his big "feelings" problems were solved, and now he felt like he'd downed a bottle of Jack Daniels during flu season. Outside, chatty Midwesterners smiled at one another like the world hadn't changed immeasurably as of yesterday, like everything was still okay. Dean lived in Lawrence. Here, he worked as a mechanic, which was satisfactory. Nothing special, but nobody ever expected him to be that. Dean wasn't happy, but he wasn't giving the gun in his closet hungry eyes either. He lived in a small duplex, which was cheap enough that he didn't practice noose tying every month, but it was decidedly suburban in a way Dean couldn't stand. He was restless, and he didn't realize it until yesterday. Dean missed escapades through Leavenworth; he missed watching his father polish guns in motel rooms. At the same time, though, he felt safe. Dean didn't feel safe when he was young; he felt alone and lost in a world full of swift swimming self-confident suburbanites. So he became a suburbanite, and learned how much he hated being so close to the same people every day. Dean didn't want neighbors. He just wanted to belong.

With a sluggish backwash of the day's events through his mind, Dean realized that today was special. Today, Dean Winchester knew what he was going to do for the first time in eternity. He was going to deal with his own problems like his father would have wanted. He eyed the driveway as if warning the car nestled comfortably on the cement to get ready for something important. Padding into the kitchen, he winced at the cold linoleum on his feet. Linoleum was the devil's material, it was cold and sticky and plastic like everything else in his oh-so-perfect kitchen with its microwave oven and refrigerator, new necessities of the everyday life. It was disgustingly dependant. Dean growled at his refrigerator, glowering at plastic wrapped American cheese and bottles of cheap beer. He pulled the cheese out and shoved it in-between two slices of bread; the cheese sandwich was a true classic. Eating was simultaneously unbearable and apathy-soaked. He tasted very little, and what he did taste was disgusting in new and creative ways. Gnawing on what he may have called a sandwich, Dean put coffee on to brew, the bitter smell slicing the dull air in a painfully distinct way. He grimaced, but swallowed dutifully, knowing that a man had to be well fed for the first day of something so important, something like what he was going to do. He sniffed, cleared his throat, and spit into the sink. He didn't rinse it out. It was a good way to start the rest of his life, or as good as he could make it, he figured.

Three hours into a drive to California, Dean wished he'd brewed more coffee than one pot. He was tired, lethargic from years of laziness. He wasn't used to road trips, not anymore. He had given that shtick up when his brother gave their dad the middle finger and paved his own path made of good intentions to the same destination they were all headed. Now, as Dean drove down Eisenhower's God-given gift to the American people, he couldn't help but feel somewhat regretful. He felt guilty for not returning his brother's letters, for not inviting him to Dad's funeral. As Dean slid down the hot asphalt and remembered the way he had screamed himself hoarse that night in dad's name, he let the guilt pull off him like tacky glue and stick to the road behind him. There was no time for that, he reasoned. Not when Dean had already come so far. The road's quiet hum sang siren songs to him, sweetly soothing him into the cradle of the highway, the breast of Americana. Dean curled up, took it in stride, and drove for seven hours without stopping, without knowing how long it had been until he pulled to a gas station in Denver and saw the local time.

He'd driven so far, and the black lick of tar on the landscape still slithered on, a snake of modern innovation that signaled either the unification of the world or the end of travel as an enterprise (even Dean wasn't sure which). When he stopped at the rest stop, he didn't spend too much time. He felt groggy, like he had been shook awake instead of awake all day. The sun was deep in the sky, drooping like the clouds and like Dean's consciousness. Hot, heavy air smoldered around him as he stepped outside the Bel Air and drug himself inside the small convenience store. It was rusty, dusty and caked with old dirt in the corners. The man behind the counter was bald, slouched and staring at Dean with lackluster vigilance. Dean didn't worry, had no reason to. He just bought more coffee and something to eat and settled back into the nest of industrial infantry he had become so accustomed to in such a relatively short time. It would take two days to get to California, he had guessed from the maps and from previous experience.

Two days on the road wasn't long enough, as far as Dean was concerned. He inhaled deeply, sinking his lungs into the heavy aroma of gasoline and cigarettes. From behind him, he heard a grizzly older man clear his throat and hack half his blackened lung up from his chest. A woman in her sixties wearing a too short too tight dress stomped across the parking lot, click-clacking in dirty red high heels, a metronome to the soundtrack of grunge and filth that these rest stops and highway circus tents embraced so thoroughly. If the Chevy was his wife, the road was the father he should have had, and the man who would raise him from here on out, Dean decided (maybe not forthright, but subconsciously) to treat him with the same reverent respect he gave John. People told him that even after you die, you live on in the world around you. If that was true, Dean thought that John would live in the wide open road, in the routes and interstates and Chevy Bel Airs, his thick skin turned to thick roads, sad eyes turned to sad skies. He sat in the soft seats of the Chevy, let the smell infiltrate his body, and knew that this was where he belonged. This was where his home was now. And he wasn't even in California, yet.


	2. Good Old Boys

The sunrise was red, and Dean woke up with a split lip and a jaw ache that morning. He looked around the room at the lackluster motel decorating and turned over on his back before slowly pulling himself out of bed and hollered a low groan; he was groggier than he had any right to be, but looking out his tiny prison cell-sized window, seeing the Bel Air safe and sound in the parking lot calling to him, he felt something like pride, felt something like thrums of excitement in the bottom of his stomach. Or maybe that was the diner food he'd eaten the night before.

His room lived up to the reputation it garnered in his mind. Wilted anemone flowers were a cynical accent to the already downtrodden atmosphere —beige curtains matched the beige bedspread that matched the beige carpeting to a tee—that he strongly believed he shared with a number of insect companions, but didn't care enough to search them out. It was only one night, and he'd slept through worse than cockroaches.

He ate at a diner (burger, fries and a milkshake, petroleum for the modern human soul) across the street, littered with nuclear families and lonesome drifters like Dean. There was nobody asking him why he was alone, no questions of his origins and no stumble-paced conversations centering on dad that he was so plagued by in Lawrence. It was peaceful, and for a brief moment he closed his eyes and didn't see his father's face staring back at him; when he opened them again, he was handed a huge platter of food; real food, not cans of green beans that were more water than solid. He took a huge bite, letting the flavors mix in his mouth as if they were nothing short of paradise.

Maybe it was the long driving day, maybe it was his own anxiety; but to Dean, nothing was better than that burger that night. The milkshake was better, and the fries were the best. He wanted to sob at the way everything seemed to melt together, working in harmony to create such a simple pleasure.

So Dean ate, and he wasn't _happy_ by any stretch of the imagination, but for a man whose father was missing in Vietnam, he was feeling pretty damn close for the first time in days. It never occurred to him that his reaction was stronger than it would have normally been, or that maybe he was just grasping at whatever comforts he could find. After all, this whole road trip was planned in a fit of emotional disparity and paternal grief. He wasn't going to start psychoanalyzing the whole thing, for fear of what he might find (or possibly just out of ignorance, who could tell). He was ravenous, and ate faster than he would have under normal circumstances.

The server was trying to make a pass at him, he could tell, but she was at least forty one if her crow's feet and falsely dyed hair were any indication; besides that, Dean wasn't interested in women right now. He could find a girl no problem in Lawrence. He drove out here for family, not cheap lays in Nebraska diners. Keeping that in mind, he unfolded three bills from his jacket pocket and pressed them lightly down on the table, slipping out while she had her back turned behind the counter, leaving as quietly as he'd rolled into town earlier that day.

No interaction meant no problems, meant no emotions or connections.

It meant being alone for once, not bothered by neighbors or concerned bible types.

It meant being free.

He walked in the quiet streets; he looked at his feet and never made a fuss when someone collided with him in the process.

Sleeping in the motel bed was as falsely euphoric as the diner food. He was out of bounds, held down by nothing but his own inhibition and it reminded him of childhood but more bittersweet. Ratty sheets felt so good; he was able to forget about the lumps in the mattress as easily as he was able to ignore the smell of the pillows, and for a while, he just laid in bed thinking about how things were.

It had been at least ten years since he'd driven out of Lawrence, and it was to check up on his dad. After their brother had gone off on his own, Dean didn't feel up to hopping from base to base with John; he settled down in their hometown of Lawrence and became a mechanic, like his father was, before his father joined the army.

He tried to keep in touch, but it became too hard after a time. So he stopped, just stopped sending cards and writing letters and calling military lines to ask where he was stationed. Never once did he get a letter asking why he had dropped off the earth, never got a call, never saw pictures or Christmas cards returned in the mail. He figured it was his father's way of letting him leave the nest, but Dean had never known a nest to begin with.

For a while, Dean just lied there, letting the numb pain wash over him. He knew this feeling, remembered it after mom died. It felt like gnarled scar tissue and Dean was just poking at it, rubbing the edges down until it stung hard in his body. After a few minutes of allowing that dead smart of grief throb over his mind, wash behind his eyes, Dean sat up for the first time and let himself admit he was awake.

He spared a glance at the clock, and was slightly disappointed to see it was only 6:49. His body clock was still on work time, apparently. He looked out his window to see that the sun hadn't yet risen, and was staining the sky red. He was very sore. The more his body started to wake up and function in the conscious world, the more it hurt like hell. His jaw was tender, and with a little investigation, he realized he had been clenching it tight in his sleep. It was probably another dream, another dream he didn't remember but could only feel the ghost of pinching the back of his mind. Sighing, he rubbed his cheeks to let his mouth relax and grimaced when the muscles were taut and unyielding. Dean shrugged and tried to ignore the parts of his body that were more tender as he shuffled into the motel bathroom; he flicked the light on and hissed at the fluorescent sharpness in the bulbs on his barely open eyes.

After adjusting himself, he coughed and tried to fix his hair into an acceptable shape without using the comb in his duffel; his skin looked pallid in the falsely bright light, and his eyes looked dark and tired. He idly assumed this was not a trick of the light, and just another consequence of the poor sleep he'd gotten lately and his own state of subdued distress. His eyebrows cocked up in a pseudo-surprised way at his less than glowing reflection in the mirror.

The toilet was just off-color enough to make Dean uncomfortable and feel unsanitary, but not nearly dirty enough to ward him off from taking a morning shit. He flushed the toilet with his foot, though, and did not make use of the motel towels.

He hauled the duffel bag into the bathroom next; he propped it on the toilet, rustling through for his favorite comb. He pulled unruly tufts of hair on the sides of his head back, slicking his hair into a short pompadour with a half-used tube of Brylcreem, the familiar scent of pomade clinging to the air as he combed his hair into its usual shape. He gave himself a short smile in the mirror and took to the task of shaving, taking care not to nick himself and keep his still-short sideburns cleanly defined against his skin. He washed the shaving cream from his face with a few half-hearted splashes of water from the sink and toweled off with the wife beater he wore to bed. He brushed his teeth while humming the refrain to 'Ring of Fire', laced his boots while the sun finally pushed its way into the sky, and by the time he had his familiar brown leather jacket on, he'd moved to faintly singing 'Folsom Prison Blues', because if Dean Winchester was anything, he was a Johnny Cash fan.

He kept the motel key on his finger, lightly twirling it as he shouldered his duffel bag and looked over his shoulder to see if he'd left anything behind. Spying his comb on the bathroom counter, Dean rushed to get it as if it would leave any moment.

It all felt so normal that he couldn't resist a smile, as if to defy the fates of the universe, before leaving the room and pulling the door shut behind him, locking it with a resounding 'click' and heading briskly downstairs to greet his car and the open road ahead of him. The motel keeper smiled at him with an obviously trained false enthusiasm when he returned the key and bid him a good day in the cheeriest voice her employer told her to use. Dean just waved goodbye and slipped out of the Motel Six without another word, bells on the handle chiming his departure.

Dean patted the hood of the Bel Air lovingly, running his hand over the chrome with a kind of reverence. This is where she belonged, he thought, out on the road and not in some Lawrence driveway. He didn't know how he was going to go back after this; he was drunk on nostalgia, a dangerous thing but he was sure this is where he wanted to be. Maybe he just had to grow into it, take some time away to realize how lucky he was to have such a life.

He thought back to the evenings spent in their father's car, a take home black sedan, with the windows down, cool September air swimming through his hair and in his mind it was peaceful. He had forgotten the way he'd fought with Dad about moving to yet another new town, forgotten the way his Dad had nearly wrecked the car that night in a furious move of drunken abandon. He had forgotten the fear of not knowing what his Dad would do next, at what base they would be stationed, or even what would show up on the road. Dean had forgotten that, but he remembered the September breeze and cold root beer on June afternoons and learning the words to Ring of Fire as his dad sang along mostly sober.

He picked up breakfast at the same diner as the night before; he let his stomach do the decision making when he ordered, and ended up with three Styrofoam packages of waffles and two side orders of bacon he was currently trying to juggle on his knees as he drove clumsily down the main road and neared his exit to get on the highway. Dean shoved a few more pieces of bacon in his mouth and wiped his hands off on his Levi's before straightening up a little and pulling the car back under his control one hundred percent. She purred as Dean accelerated, and he slipped his fingers in the nooks of her steering wheel and growled back when they hit the highway; it was as exhilarating as it had been yesterday, even more so now that he really knew the handle of the roads.

He was hitting over seventy on the long stretches where not even trucks had driven through yet in these dense winter mornings, just him and his Bel-Air driving the paths and making their own music with the highway. Billboards passed by in a rush of color and words, their gimmicks and advertisements swerving half-heartedly around in his memory, there one minute and gone the next. Dean hummed along to the Presley hit playing on the transistor radio he'd gotten installed early last year, not thinking about anything in particular and keeping a mind as empty as the black lick of asphalt in front of him.

The first few hours went by easy like that, just a mess of color and vibration and music and the sweet smell of sun hitting his breakfast. By noon, though, Dean had his back slumped against the back of the seat and he was glaring at the road.

He had started to think about things, a terrifying practice especially for Dean; in particular, he was thinking about his brother. His brother who had taken off when their dad had needed him most for college, who never wrote to tell him that everything was okay, who never even tried to admit they were family. After eighteen years of being on the road together, he just up and left and Dean wanted to punch his stupid face in but couldn't because that's probably not what mom _would have wanted_.

Dean remembered his mother; she died shortly after his brother was born, a huge case of wrong place, wrong time that left him with chills. Their mother had been tending to her newborn baby when a house next door was broken into; the robber had fled to the Winchester home in a desperate escape after being found out, and wasn't expecting anyone to be awake. Shocked, he fired on Mary Winchester, three times in the chest, and claimed it was in self-defense. His lawyer did a damn good job, too, since he never went to jail for second degree homicide like the bastard should have. Instead, he sits in Johnson County prison for his crime against property—breaking in to the home.

The memory of his father sitting at the kitchen table of the month getting fed the news by phone with his stone cold gaze pointing straight ahead still left a hard brand on Dean, and the image of his mother bleeding out on the floor of his brothers nursery was something he could never forget. From then on, the Winchesters were military men, fighting the good fight for the United States of America.

Their father had come up with some patriotic half-ass excuse at the time for their sudden departure to Leavenworth, and Dean had believed it for some time. His brother never did, not once. He never sat still in the car, he never shut his mouth when their dad was on the phone, and he never learned not to go near Dad when he came home late. He complained about the road, tried to get to know the new neighbors wherever they went, and Dad and Dean both just sat, just sat and tried to ignore the way he was hurting for a real family.

Dean's lips were thin when he pulled up to the toll booth on the Utah border. He had to dig around for the change he needed, but found it just fine after a few minutes of barely quiet cursing and angry groping through his wallet. He nearly flung the fee at the booth guard, caught up in bad blood and guilt that he couldn't be the brother he should have been, or the son, or the man even. The booth guard tried to wish him a good evening, sir; he just drove.

He drove through Utah for around two hours before he just couldn't take it any longer. He'd driven through Nebraska, Ohio, but nothing was quite as dull as Utah. He saw dead Earth around him, dark rocky soil crumbling around itself and the occasional bird in the sky. Trees were scarce, and according to his map there was probably a river somewhere in the state to be found, but from the looks of it now, Dean wasn't so sure. He pulled off to the side at a town named Price to sleep for the night, choosing the cheapest looking motel he could find; he was justly rewarded when he stumbled into a olive and pumpkin colored room with paintings of boats on the mysterious Green River of Utah. The bedspread was a Native American abomination, and the bathroom held on to every speck and flake of dust and dirt since what looked like 1952. Dean shrugged, apathetic to the state of disarray his room had, apathetic to everything right about now.

He went back outside once that night, only to grab the food from earlier and try to eat it—the Styrofoam didn't preserve his waffles well, though, and they tasted sour like Dean's mood. He threw them away into the trashcan beside his bed before falling asleep in his clothes without a shower, road dirt and silt sticking to his body in a thick and uncomfortable way.

He dreamt of September breezes that night, but this time there was more than just a smiling Dean Winchester at nine years old in the backseat of a military issued sedan.

There was his father, swearing as he tried to maneuver on a dangerously thin country road and the screeching sound the car made when he swerved to avoid careening into a deer. His effort was in vain, the car was steadfast, and the deer made a sickening thud noise when it made impact on the windshield. Blood smeared across the hood and front of the car, and his brother began to cry at the sight, asking what happened and why did Dad hit the deer and why did he have to come with Dean and Dad when he just wanted to stay in Oklahoma? Dean tried to calm him down, as well as a nine year old boy could calm down a four year old one, tried to tell him it would be okay and that Dad didn't hit the deer on purpose nobody wanted to kill the deer it wasn't dad's fault it was never dad's fault and don't cry. His brother kept crying. Dean started to cry too.

Their dad was standing outside, swearing with his hands on his head, trying to run through hair that wasn't long enough anymore. He pulled the deer off the windshield and with a few heaves and half-screamed 'goddamnits' he got the deer to the side of the road, out of harm's way. He stormed through the brush on the side of the road back to his truck, opened the back to pull out a towel and saw his sons sitting there, huddled and crying. Dean was still trying to comfort his brother, who was hitting him and telling him that he just wanted to go home, he didn't like the Army and he just _hated _America and didn't want to be _a good soldier_ anymore.

His father's gaze got dead, as dead as the deer, and Dean tried to shush Sam and stop crying but he couldn't. It was already done. Their father cleaned the windshield in silence, mouth set in a line, eyes focused on the work ahead of him and too busy being as angry as he'd ever been to notice that Dean was shivering he was so scared.

When he got back in the truck, started it up again and made sure everything worked, Dean thought he would turn around and yell at them for not respecting him, for not understanding how important this work was. He didn't do any of that. He just drove, eyes straight ahead on the road, knuckles white on the steering wheel, body tense and hard, not saying a word. He pulled the truck off at a small shack down by where the Missouri river pooled into a little pond used by farmers sometimes to water their cows. The shack stood on its own, no marks of military importance or importance of any kind, for that matter. Their dad turned around and his eyes were bright with what could have been pain or sadness or anger, Dean couldn't tell. He had a gun in his hand, a manila folder in the other.

"Get out and don't make a single noise, okay? You got that?"

Dean and his brother nodded, and Dean remembered the fear he felt all too well, remembered the way it bubbled inside him like hot acid. When his feet hit the dirt, he remembered the way the ground gave beneath him like he was weighed down by his own emotions. He helped his brother out of the truck, tried to keep a straight face and tried not to break down when his father crept through the brush towards the shack. They'd parked far away, and at the time Dean didn't know why, but looking back he understood that silence had been key. His father motioned for them to stop as he stood up now, straight and professional as ever in his military uniform. His boots made a quiet crunching noise but he didn't stop or slow down, just kept marching on. Dean and his brother crept behind him like mice, tiny children scurrying. They were a stark contrast against their tall, muscular father.

Dean was still wiry then, still a tiny thing made of all skin and bones. Their dad had them stand against the side of the shack while he knocked heavily on the door, three times and Dean couldn't help but feel like that was entirely deliberate even if he didn't know how. There was a pause, pregnant and precarious, as their father leaned against the battered door trying to listen with his eyes as well as his ears. Dean and his brother looked up at their father, trying to convey the fear they were feeling, but he either ignored it or wasn't able to pick up on it and both were totally possible. There was a chaotic crashing noise from inside the small house and their father smiled.

"Gotcha," he growled, and backed up, muscles tensing as he moved to a stance that Dean could only recall as 'large' before he threw himself against the door fully, pushing it in. With a powerful kick to the center of the door, it broke down with a huge sound like a bullet from a gun. Their father stepped over the fractured wood and splintered doorframe, shoulders hulking and gun cocked. When Dean chanced a look, all he saw was his father—or at least, that's all he remembered seeing. Then there was another crash, and before he could stop him, his brother had scurried inside. Dean followed, trying to get a handle on what was happening. He was standing over a man in a heavy coat holding a lighter and a crowbar, a man who couldn't have been over thirty with thinness to his body that reminded Dean of a stray dog and a fear in his eyes that Dean knew from his own reflection. The man was babbling in a language Dean didn't recognize, and he was confused as hell to hear his father speak it back at him. They went on for a while, and Dean could only catch one word out of all of them: communist. A dirty word, a word Dean didn't hear unless something was really going wrong. They talked for a while longer before dad looked over and saw that Dean and his brother were just standing there, watching everything unfold.

"Get over here, Dean, bring your brother," their dad snapped, talking like Dean was doing something wrong and Dean knew that tone so he just grabbed his brother by the wrist and dragged him to the lanky man on the ground, who looked sick and sad and scared, and Dean understood. His father pulled some papers from the manila folder he'd been carrying the whole time, and started to read off what Dean figured out was a list of charges. This man was a bad man. That was what he eventually decided. His brother was scared, didn't understand exactly why he was here or who the man was, but he tried to help him and their dad pushed him back.

"Don't. He's a bad man, boy." Dean took his brother away, pulled him aside.

"Why's he bad?" His brother asked, and Dean spared a glance; his brother was nearly in tears. He was confused, frightened and he didn't know what to do because he didn't trust any of the people in this room except maybe (and it was a big maybe) Dean and they all expected him to act naturally.

"He's a Red," John Winchester declared, tossing the manila folder on the floor and sliding it towards the man. He looked at his boys.

"He hates America, he isn't even from around here. He's from East Berlin, where the Soviets are," he went on to explain, and Dean knew that if his schools and his dad and his dad's friends had taught him anything, it was that this man was wrong, just wrong in every sense.

"Why does he hate America?" His brother asked quietly, timid because just a few minutes ago (although it seemed like it had been years) he'd hated America too.

"Because he's a fucking Communist, that's why, and he's killed a lot of good men just to kill them. You want to be like this man who worked with the son of a bitch who killed your mom?" Dean couldn't be sure, even as an adult, whether that was true. Nobody knew if the man who shot Mary Winchester actually affiliated with the Communist party or if that was simply propaganda started and spread by the Lawrence government, who was eager to rouse sensation. Still, the message stuck. Communists killed Mary Winchester. So what did John Winchester do? He went out, joined the army, and made a job out of killing Commies.

He let Dean and his brother think about that for a moment, think about the man ten feet away from them who knew the specter of a person that shot Mary Winchester three times in the chest and got off a murder charge because nobody could prove it wasn't self defense. Dean heard the shot of gunfire only three times in his life—once, on the day his mother died, again when their dad took them to target practice when Dean was 16 and his brother was 12, and the night in September when their father shot that man dead while his boys watched. Dean never forgot about it, but he let it simmer in the back of his mind. He didn't want to remember.

So it came out in his dreams. He'd lived the same moment hundreds of times over in his sleep, been jolted awake at the sound of his father's gun, felt the fear pool in his palms as they drove down the dark September roads. And every morning, when Dean woke up in a nervous hurry because the dreams had gotten just a little too real, he let himself forget again that it happened. He always polished the memory of his father after it tarnished. The night he spent in the Utah motel was no different. Just like always, he woke up with a distinguishably vague recollection of his dreams, a quiet nagging in the back of his head that told him to dig deeper. He never did. He just picked himself up, brushed off any fears he might have had while asleep, and trekked onward. His father remained a figure of near godhood, and his brother remained a close friend turned distant. Family never changed for Dean. It was just like always.


End file.
